Side-lighting on the mist rising from this hot springs provided an opportunity to capture the steam in just a touch of soft light. The brilliant orange tones in the bacterial mats around the pool provided an interesting foreground.

If steam or mist rise above the horizon, Graduated Neutral Density filters don’t work very well. A GND filter will darken the top of the steam as well as the rest of the sky, which makes everything look unnatural. I blended images manually for this shot, but even so, it required careful processing. To capture this photograph, I waited until the steam from the hot spring was dispersed enough to showcase the interesting patterns, and to let me see the details behind the pool. Yellowstone National Park is a beautiful place, isn’t it?